Friday, January 21, 2005

New Democrat or Old Freeper?

A blog was born on January 10th, 2005. A blog called "The New Democrat" at this url: http://new-democrat.blogspot.com. According to Ricky, the blogger in charge, the blog was started because "the Democratic Party has been hijacked by loony extreme leftist fringe groups, like MoveOn.org, the Anti-War movement, the anti-gun groups, Planned Parenthood, Michael Moore, George Soros, PETA and the militant homosexual/lesbian lobby."

Ricky's second post on The New Democrat was entitled "Congressional Democrats' Racist Policy." He surmises: "Both black and white Democrats in the Senate and the House don’t want to see any conservative members of minorities appointed by a Republican president, because they fear losing their loyal base in black and Latino communities." At the end of the post, Ricky claims that it was Republican bloggers who led the way to force Trent Lott out after his infamous comments. Lott might have been forced out of his leadership role, but that's about the only thing that's true about the entire article.

Ricky's next post was against Howard Dean's pursuit of the D.N.C. chair. While he toned down his rhetoric a little bit against Mr. Dean, Ricky aimed at Terry McAulliffe's jugular: "Hey, Terry, quit while you're ahead. Before us angry Democrats come to the DNC headquarters and throw you out of the window."

Now I've had my diffences in the past and the present with those that consider themselves "new" democrats or moderates. But even Mr. Centrist himself, Al From, the CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council ("We've got to repudiate, you know, the most strident and insulting anti-American voices out there sometimes on our party's left... We can't have our party identified by Michael Moore and Hollywood as our cultural values." Read "No More Moore" by Matt Taibbi), would never, ever go that far (off the left side of the sphere) and say anything as poisonous as any of that.

But somebody's reading this blog. Somebody, indeed. In just ten days, the blog has garnered 9,457 hits (as I write). But even though Ricky has posted comments with links to his blog on nearly every big time left-leaning blog of note (and all those who wrote about the Kos-Trippi Affair), if you check out his counter (link) you'll see he gets the vast majority of his hits from the right side of the blogosphere.

Some questions to ponder. How did Ricky become such a major blog player in only ten days? Who does he know? What blogs link to him? What blogs has he blogged at before? What aliases has he used in the past?

Contributors

"Or take this guy, Ron Brynaert, a tenacious (lefty, stand alone) investigator with an instinct for where information and proof and the jugular are. He's a natural: Why isn't he on someone's I-team?" Jay Rosen, June 6, 2005.